The goal of this research project is to characterize the space of images in the natural world in a statistical sense. By understanding what correlations are likely to occur in the visual world, we can draw conclusions about how the visual system uses these regularities to process information in an efficient way. The first experiment is designed to find the range of intensities typical in natural scene images through an analysis of pixel intensity histograms. This research would be critical for an understanding of the physiology of the retina, where information about the visual world is gathered. The second experiment will investigate the structure of retinal ganglion cells. We seek to understand why these cells, which are one of the first levels of processing after photoreceptors, have localized, center-surround sensitivity. We will bring together our results from the first two experiments to compliment concurrent work being done in the lab on massively over complete coding in the visual system. This research program has important implications about how the visual system evolved to its current robust, efficient structure. By determining the mechanisms at work in coding early vision, our study may suggest new therapeutic strategies in the retina and new technologies in synthetic vision.